SHE’S been driven around New York by Sebastian Vettel and taken to Silverstone by Mark Webber. Not only does Formula 1 TV presenter Lee McKenzie get the cars, she gets the drivers, too.

But car sharing with an F1 driver has its drawbacks. “Sometimes, they’re not the greatest passengers,” she said.

“They tend to get too involved. There is nothing worse than having a proper Formula 1 driver sitting beside you because they criticise everything.

“They start telling you how to drive racing lines when you’re just going along a perfectly ordinary road. Any racing driver – and I have had quite a few of them in my car – tends to drive me mad.

“I enjoy driving. I think it’s a fun experience and I like having people in my car who are happy to sing along as I do.”

Lee, who has been driving since she was 17, saved up £1100 for her first car, which was a Wedgwood blue Ford Fiesta.

It took her from home in Ayr to university in Edinburgh, and all the sports she covered at the weekends for various papers. Sadly, it was stolen from outside Edinburgh Accies rugby ground – or rather borrowed by someone to get them home on a particularly bad winter’s day.

The car was found within hours with all Lee’s gear still inside. “Whoever took it clearly did not share my fashion sense,” joked the 35-year-old.

But the car was never the same again for her and, shortly afterwards, she sold it and bought herself a Corsa SRI, which she hated, finally ending up with a Golf Mk3.

By then at Borders Television, it took her everywhere – until she wrote it off.

“I was doing a lot of driving in the Lake District, where you can get really bad weather, and I came around a corner, which was like a right-hand down a dip and then a 90-degree, left-hand turn over a bridge,” recalled Lee.

“I braked and I was probably going too fast for the conditions, although it didn’t seem like it at the time, and I just couldn’t stop and I skidded and went into a wall.

“Bizarrely, I had done the skid pan at Knockhill the week before and I knew I should not slam on the brakes and I was using my clutch and all the rest of it.

“I was able to steer round so I did get off the bridge, otherwise I might have gone into the river, but I ended up smashing into a wall.

“The car was wrecked, which was a shame, but I loved it so much that I bought my brother’s, because he had the same car only in white.”

Lee likes prestige cars and is not a great fan of the superminis. She is more a German car kind of girl. Over the years, she has had Audis and BMWs and has just swapped an Audi A3 for the new A-Class Mercedes.

Audi A3 (Image: Audi)

“It’s a fantastic car. It only came out in November and, when I saw it, I really liked how it looked. It’s so different to the old A-Class – it’s just not comparable at all,” she said.

“I got in it and it was just beautiful. It’s an automatic – I always like an automatic – and it has the full AMG kit on it. It’s top of the range and I could not wish for a better car.

“It’s mountain grey with big black wheels and I feel really lucky to have it.

“It’s a front-wheel drive, because I didn’t want rear-wheel, and it’s got winter tyres on for the worst of the snow because I’m up and down the M6 all the time from England to Scotland.

“This car has just been fantastic to drive. It has all the toys on it.”

Lee particularly likes the parking sensors and sat-nav, for which she is only a recent convert.

As a co-driver in rallies, she loved her maps and still keeps them, but cannot believe how easy sat-nav has made her life.

Her phone is always hooked up to hands-free and her iPod has everything on it from hardcore R&B to classical and pop. She loves to drive to music.

Last year, she launched the £800,000 McLaren P1 at the Paris Motor Show and named that as her dream car.

She said: “It’s the latest supercar. Very few people have seen it or touched it and I have been right up close to it.

“There are not many cars like this any more and thousands of people watched the launch.

“It was designed in the Formula 1 wind tunnel and it can go on the road or on the circuit.

“It’s not really in production at the moment, although there is one that Jensen Button drove last month.

“It’s as close to a racing car as you can get with a road car and, because I have been so involved with it, I have a little place in my heart for it.”